A horizon scan was conducted to identify emerging and intensifying issues for biodiversity conservation in South Africa over the next 5–10 years. South African biodiversity experts submitted 63 ...issues of which ten were identified as priorities using the Delphi method. These priority issues were then plotted along axes of social agreement and scientific certainty, to ascertain whether issues might be “simple” (amenable to solutions from science alone), “complicated” (socially agreed upon but technically complicated), “complex” (scientifically challenging and significant levels of social disagreement) or “chaotic” (high social disagreement and highly scientifically challenging). Only three of the issues were likely to be resolved by improved science alone, while the remainder require engagement with social, economic and political factors. Fortunately, none of the issues were considered chaotic. Nevertheless, strategic communication, education and engagement with the populace and policy makers were considered vital for addressing emerging issues.
Globally, environmental and social change in water-scarce regions challenge the sustainability of social-ecological systems. WaterSES, a sponsored working group within the Program for Ecosystem ...Change and Society, explores and compares the social-ecological dynamics related to water scarcity across placed-based international research sites with contrasting local and regional water needs and governance, including research sites in Spain and Sweden in Europe, South Africa, China, and Alabama, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Texas in the USA. This paper aims to provide a commentary on insights into conducting future solutions-oriented research on water scarcity based on the understanding of the social-ecological dynamics of water scarce regions.
The collections serve to fulfill two critical objectives—first, to highlight conservation research occurring on the continent and second, to promote the work and experiences of African conservation ...scientists and practitioners. ...we are actively seeking papers spanning all aspects of conservation science from Africa and about Africa. ...we aim to use this and future special sections to consciously facilitate the exchange, transfer, diffusion, and uptake of empirical information and knowledge generated and published by African researchers based in African institutions. ...we see that conservation practitioners in Africa are taking advantage of new tools and technologies for monitoring species and adapting them to fit their specific contexts or target species.
Global declines in biodiversity and the widespread degradation of ecosystem services have led to urgent calls to safeguard both. Responses to this urgency include calls to integrate the needs of ...ecosystem services and biodiversity into the design of conservation interventions. The benefits of such integration are purported to include improvements in the justification and resources available for these interventions. Nevertheless, additional costs and potential trade-offs remain poorly understood in the design of interventions that seek to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services. We sought to investigate the synergies and trade-offs in safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity in South Africa's Little Karoo. We used data on three ecosystem services--carbon storage, water recharge, and fodder provision--and data on biodiversity to examine several conservation planning scenarios. First, we investigated the amount of each ecosystem service captured incidentally by a conservation plan to meet targets for biodiversity only while minimizing opportunity costs. We then examined the costs of adding targets for ecosystem services into this conservation plan. Finally, we explored trade-offs between biodiversity and ecosystem service targets at a fixed cost. At least 30% of each ecosystem service was captured incidentally when all of biodiversity targets were met. By including data on ecosystem services, we increased the amount of services captured by at least 20% for all three services without additional costs. When biodiversity targets were reduced by 8%, an extra 40% of fodder provision and water recharge were obtained and 58% of carbon could be captured for the same cost. The opportunity cost (in terms of forgone production) of safeguarding 100% of the biodiversity targets was about US$500 million. Our results showed that with a small decrease in biodiversity target achievement, substantial gains for the conservation of ecosystem services can be achieved within our biodiversity priority areas for no extra cost.
1. Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015) highlighted what they call a conceptual flaw in our study (Egoh et al. 2014) and some operational flaws. Here, we respond to these. 2. According to Kotiaho & Moilanen ...(2015), the conceptual flaw is that we supposedly neglect both the magnitude of degradation and the magnitude of improvement of the ecosystem condition expected due to restoration in the original paper (Egoh et al. 2014). However, we took magnitude of degradation into account in the paper (Egoh et al. 2014) by not including areas with habitats and species in favourable conservation status and also excluding artificial surfaces such as urban areas. 3. We argue that the operational flaws, the authors cite (specifically with respect to the inclusion of restoration cost), were taken out of context and the calculations on the effective area requiring restoration within a grid cell were not well understood by the authors. 4. In the original paper (Egoh et al. 2014), restoration cost was only included in one analysis to investigate the effects of including different criteria on the area selected. Also, each grid cell selected contained only areas defined as restorable in our analysis. 5. Synthesis and applications. The points raised by Kotiaho & Moilanen (2015) are surely relevant and pertinent to the general discussion on restoration efforts, but when applied to our study, these points are out of context. Areas identified for restoration should consider magnitude of degradation as in our study. However, the inclusion of cost should be carefully considered; in our case, we used a proxy for cost only to understand the implication of including many criteria in identifying priority areas.
Effective planning of a large-scale restoration project is challenging, because of the range of factors that need to be considered (e.g. restoration of multiple habitats with varying degradation ...levels, multiple restoration goals and limited conservation resources). Ecological restoration planning studies typically focus on biodiversity and ecosystem services, rather than employment and other co-benefits. Robust Offsetting (RobOff), a restoration planning tool, was used in a forest restoration project in Durban, South Africa, to plan forest restoration considering a mosaic of habitats with varying levels of degradation, diverse restoration actions, a limited budget and multiple (biodiversity, carbon stock and employment) goals. To achieve this, the restoration action currently being implemented (= current action) was compared to three restoration alternatives. The three restoration alternatives included (1) natural regeneration action; (2) carbon action; and (3) biodiversity action. The results supported biodiversity action as most beneficial in terms of maximizing biodiversity, carbon storage and job creation. Results showed that investing in biodiversity action is preferable to the status quo. RobOff ensured optimal allocation of limited resources to actions and habitats that have a potential to achieve higher biodiversity, carbon storage and job creation.
Abstract
International efforts to avoid dangerous climate change aim for global carbon dioxide (CO
2
) emissions to be net-zero by midcentury. Such a goal will require both drastically reducing ...emissions from high-income countries and avoiding large increases in emissions from still-developing countries. Yet most analyses focus on rich-country emissions reductions, with much less attention to trends in low-income countries. Here, we use a Kaya framework to analyze patterns and trends in CO
2
emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels in Africa between 1990 and 2017. In total, African CO
2
emissions were just 4% of global fossil fuel emissions in 2017, or 1185 MtCO
2
, having grown by 4.6% yr
−1
on average over the period 1990–2017 (cf the global growth rate of 2.2% yr
−1
over the same period). In 2017, 10 countries accounted for about 87% of the continent’s emissions. Despite modest recent reductions in some countries’ CO
2
emissions, projections of rapid growth of population and per capita GDP will drive future increases in emissions. Indeed, if the continent-wide average growth rate of 2010–2017 persists, by 2030 Africa’s emissions will have risen by ∼30% (to 1545 MtCO
2
). Moreover, if increases in carbon intensity also continue, Africa’s emissions would be substantially higher. In either case, such growth is at odds with international climate goals. Achieving such goals will require that the energy for African countries’ development instead come from non-emitting sources.
Mapping ecosystem services (ES) has become an important tool to study nature's contributions to people (NCP) spatially and to manage ecosystems sustainably. However, few of these studies have been ...carried out in Africa and even fewer in drylands. This is not surprising, as drylands in general have not received much attention in the field of ecosystem services due to the perception that they do not provide much due to their low levels of productivity. In addition, not much data is available to map ecosystem services in Africa. In this study, we map regulating services of the Marrakesh Safi region in Morocco. First, a land cover map was developed based on existing information. This land cover map was thereafter used to map and model three regulating service categories in the region namely, carbon sequestration, microclimate regulation, and hydrological services (water regulation and water quantity) using six indicators. Our results show that agricultural land, which occupies the largest percentage area, also sequestered the most carbon in the study area. Forests sequestered about 16% carbon despite occurring in only 14% of the area and are the most efficient in sequestering carbon when considering carbon sequestered per hectare per year. The ecosystem type with the highest potential to supply water regulation services was Quercus ilex with about 200 m3/ha. The study shows that the hotspots areas are located in the southeast parts of the study area where the Quercus ilex is mostly found. Contrary to the belief that most arid systems are not productive and therefore do not provide many ecosystem services, our spatial outputs showed that the area around Marrakesh in Morocco, despite being arid provides many regulating services including water and microclimate regulation.
•A detailed land cover map was developed in this study for the data sparse region of Morocco.•Forest ecosystems are more efficient in sequestering carbon than other land cover types in the region of Marrakesh Safi, Morocco.•The Quercus ilex forest ecosystem provide the highest amount of regulating services in the region of Marrakesh Safi, Morocco.•Bour Agriculture (rainfed) as an ecosystem offers important levels of ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration in Marrakesh Safi, Morocco.•Arid and semi-arid areas in Morocco provide important regulating services such as water and microclimate regulation.
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